The Unabomber Op Redux

Ted Kaczinsky’s dead
No, no, no, no, he’s playing chess, with Hồ Chí Minh

I read in the New York Times that Kaczinsky, whom the FBI epitheted the “Unabomber,” had died in his cell at the Federal Medical Center, Butner in North Carolina. After the initial announcement, it was reported that he hung himself. ¹

I became forever linked to him when in the mid 1990’s someone fingered me to the FBI, who then put me on their Unabomber suspect list. Nuts! I wrote about this false fingering when I learned of it in the FBI’s response to an FOIA request. ²

There is no doubt in my mind that the Miscavigeite Scientology cultists, their crooked lawyers, their crooked PIs, or their crooked allies in the US Federal Government cooked up this nasty tactic. It wasn’t a disgruntled ex-wife, a disgruntled neighbor, or a disgruntled trail runner among the dozens I ran with regularly. No, no, no, no, the only persons with such an evil purpose were David Miscavige, his cabal running his cult and their collaborators. Criminally framing innocent critics of their abuses and criminality was “standard tech” for the Scientologists, first the Hubbardites and then the Miscavigeites.

None of them gave a flying feijoa about finding the Unabomber. None of them thought for one second that I was guilty of his crimes. They all knew I was working for San Anselmo, CA attorney Ford Greene, and defending four lawsuits they were then prosecuting against me. The Miscavigeites only wanted to smear me to the FBI, get their black propaganda into the Bureau’s files, and cause me any trouble they could. They had already famously framed my previous lawyer Mike Flynn and me. Using Interpol and the US Drug Enforcement Agency, they had just had David Mayo arrested and jailed in the Dominican Republic on false charges.

Miscavige and his crime cult had recently, and illegally, obtained official US recognition as an IRS tax exempt religion, and were fanatically emboldened. The IRS, DOJ, FBI and other elements of the US Federal Government had a powerful interest in defending their decisions to benefit the Miscavigeites, in ensuring the cult’s safety and success, and in ignoring and marginalizing their victims. That situation still exists today. It can be seen in a series of bizarre court rulings in the US that favor the Miscavige cult and unlawfully violate their victims’ rights including their religious freedom guaranteed by the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

The Miscavigites might very well have fingered other persons among the most hated and feared “enemies” they created in that period. David Mayo and Lawrence Wollersheim were likely targets. Nan McClean, an outspoken Scientology opponent from the early 1970’s, was again speaking out after being gagged. Glue on a mustache and give her a hoodie, and she’d make a good Unabomber. Terri Gamboa and Janis Grady had recently blown Miscavige’s cult and were a threat to him. The locations of all of them during the Unabomber’s 18-year bombing spree intersect with the same number as mine: exactly zero. All of them were as conceivable as I was of being the guy. ³

And one final small world factoid in my non-brush with the Unabomber, which I just discovered on Wikipedia:

A federal grand jury indicted Kaczynski in June 1996 on ten counts of illegally transporting, mailing, and using bombs. Kaczynski’s lawyers, headed by Montana federal public defenders Michael Donahoe and Judy Clarke, attempted to enter an insanity defense to avoid the death penalty, but Kaczynski rejected this strategy. On January 8, 1998, he asked to dismiss his lawyers and hire Tony Serra as his counsel; Serra had agreed not to use an insanity defense and instead promised to base a defense on Kaczynski’s anti-technology views. After this request was unsuccessful, Kaczynski tried to kill himself on January 9.⁴

I met Serra in 1995 or 1996 outside the San Mateo, CA Courthouse where I was filing papers for Ford Greene in the case of Anne-Marie Bertolucci, vs. J. Donald Walters and the Ananda Church of Self Realization. I knew of Serra as a prominent, if eccentric, civil rights lawyer, and recognized him by the old truck he drove and his long hair, which was just about as long as mine at the time. This was before his involvement in Kaczinsky’s trial which was in 1998, and, of course, I wouldn’t even suspect I was fingered as a Unabomber suspect for more than twenty years. Serra and I chatted about my cases that Ford and I were defending. Serra was interested because all my litigations with the cult were the Underdog vs. Machine Monster kind similar to his. Given his battles and reputation with the DOJ, IRS, etc., he was a much more likely Unabomber candidate than I ever was.⁵

Notes